


Talk Some Sense to Me

by a_classic_fool



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, American Revolution RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Biting, Breathplay, Canon Era, Cravats as a plot point, Hair-pulling, Historically justified undernegotiated kink, Internalized Homophobia, Light BDSM, M/M, Minor Violence, Non-Sexual Kink, Pining, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-25
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-06 16:00:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11603994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_classic_fool/pseuds/a_classic_fool
Summary: January 1778. Alexander's trauma catches up to him as he joins the Continental Army at Valley Forge after a serious illness.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from Amber Run's ["I Found"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj6V_a1-EUA). Many thanks to @ossapher for beta-ing and being a generally supportive and fabulous person.

The first night it happens is the coldest yet, beyond cold, the kind of sensation that’s too brutal to be anything but pain. The fire in the front room is smoking — it’s been smoking for hours, but no one wants to be anywhere other than as close to a fireplace as possible. The wood they’re burning is too wet, and they all know it, and there’s nothing to be done, and it’s making John cough. They burned through the dry kindling weeks ago.

John feels useless and stagnant, trapped indoors like this. His skin feels too tight, the anger that lives beneath it too close to the surface. He avoids letting his shoulder brush against Meade’s when he stands up to pace around the room, shifts sideways to avoid Tilghman’s hand as he sits back down. He cannot be touched or he might explode, and he cannot explode or he might be unable to escape from the wreckage, might come down from the bright, electric high of a fight and stay down. He has to do something, and there is nothing to do but write letters and wait.

As it is, the volume of correspondence they’re dealing with seems to have tripled in the past few weeks. John’s glad of it, ultimately, because even if his hand now cramps when he tries to do simple things like put on his boots or pick up a knife, he’d rather close his eyes and see the afterimage of his own handwriting than close his eyes and see darkness. 

John looks up when someone calls his name and realizes that the room has emptied but for himself and Lafayette, who’s staring at him with his head tipped sideways and a soft half-smile on his face. 

“There you are,” says Lafayette. 

“I haven’t gone anywhere,” says John, which is true. He shifts and his hips are uncomfortable from staying in the same position on a hard chair for so long.

“You have in your mind, I think.” Lafayette pauses, with an expression that suggests he’s trying to find the word for something. “You have, ah — the cockroach? That can’t be right.”

“Excuse me?”

“ _Tu as le cafard._ ”

“Ah,” says John. A pause, then, “That obvious?”

“You look terrible.” Lafayette stretches his arms above his head and yawns widely, arching his back like a cat. 

“I do not,” says John, although he knows it’s a lie. He does look terrible. They all look terrible — everyone’s exhausted and cold, everyone’s clothes are falling apart, everyone’s eyes are shadowed with the weight of the winter — but even if the whole camp was well-fed and warm, John thinks his loneliness would probably still show on his face. He can’t bury himself in work like Alexander. The longer he stays still, the harder it becomes to move, and the more days of his life are wasted. 

Lafayette moves in to stand behind him, running his long fingers through John’s hair. John’s curls have gone mad since the snow started, dampening each time he steps outside and then drying into a still more unmanageable mop with the heat of the fire. Several significant chunks have recently frozen and snapped off.

“John,” says Lafayette, undoing the leather tie that secures John’s ponytail. “He _will_ be back.”

Nobody but Alexander and Lafayette calls him John and it makes his heart twinge, these two men who see something in him better than what he sees in himself. Lafayette sections John’s hair and starts to braid it, a steady pull against John’s scalp, and it feels unspeakably good. John shuts his eyes, letting the light from the fire color the insides of his eyelids an odd, burnt red. 

“I thought he’d be back today,” John says.

“He’s been ill. He won’t be able to ride as fast as he usually does.”

John doesn’t know exactly how sick Alexander’s been and he doesn’t like to think about it. Immediately after Alexander collapsed, there’d been reports that he was on his last few breaths, but Alexander is too stubborn for death. It makes John feel guilty, somehow. He should be the one sick, not Alexander. His own illness would have little consequence — it wouldn’t stop the flow of his father’s money into the army, anyway, and he himself is far from irreplaceable. 

Lafayette ties off the end of the braid and lets his hands rest on John’s shoulders, rubbing the knots in the muscles there. 

“Sleep, John,” he says. “You have been the last one to bed for too many nights.”

“I can’t sleep,” says John. It’s true. When they’re campaigning, when there are battles and long days in the saddle and his body is ruined with exhaustion, sleep comes easily. He doesn’t lie awake in the dark, too tired to stay awake but too empty to fall asleep, the way he does now. 

Lafayette presses a kiss to the top of John’s head, which makes John’s throat feel tight and strange, and pulls on his coat. He wraps several scarves around his face and neck with such vigor that by the time he’s finished swaddling himself, he resembles little more than a pair of eyes peeking out over several sheep’s worth of wool. 

“One night at a time,” he says, muffled through the layers of cloth, and pulls the door open, letting in a gust of wind that almost extinguishes the last flames of the fire. Swearing under his breath in French, he steps outside and begins to make his way through the snow to his quarters. 

John stays where he is until the fire sputters and dies. He blows on it, trying to coax it back to life, but he succeeds only in breathing in a large amount of smoke and eventually he gives up, resigning himself to several hours of staring at a different ceiling. He steps over the creakiest floorboards as best he can on his way to his room, the quiet of the house pressing against his ears. Something about it seems to thrum and pulse like a heartbeat. 

The room he will eventually share with Alexander is enormous compared to the tent they shared over the summer, but at the moment he thinks he’d take the tent. Toeing off his boots and kicking them under the bed, he buries himself, fully dressed, in blankets and drapes his coat over the places where the wool of them has worn thin. He knows he’ll have to write his father for clothes and bedding soon — knows it and hates that he knows it. 

As tucks his hands into his armpits to keep his fingers warm, he is, at least, grateful not to be sleeping in the attic room anymore. Apart from the lump on the back of his head, which has still not entirely gone away, spending nights with nothing but a few inches of roof between his body and the outside air had been unbearable. 

John’s nearly asleep and he has no idea how many hours it’s been when the creak of hinges startles him awake. He’s already scrambling to sit up, yelping at the sudden exposure of his torso to the night air, before he sees who’s standing in the doorway, face odd and eerie in the flickering candlelight.

“Alexander,” he says, his whole body relaxing and going weightless at the same time. 

The slanted glow of the candle in Alexander’s hand throws his face into skeletal relief and John can see that the circles under Alexander’s eyes are enormous, spreading in half-moons down towards cheekbones that seem much more prominent than usual. A consequence of the fever, John supposes. 

Alexander drops his belongings to the floor, sets down the candle and blows it out, and undoes his boots. Before John can say another word or point Alexander towards the other bed in the room, Alexander’s crawling across John’s body to nestle himself between John and the wall. 

“We have two beds now,” John whispers to Alexander, without much conviction.

Alexander nods his head and curls into a ball, arms folded tight against his chest as though he’s protecting himself from something. He looks very small, suddenly, and very young, and John suppresses the urge to wrap his arms around Alexander. John’s spent a long time watching his friends grow more and more comfortable touching one another — hands on shoulders, wrestling matches in the dust outside tents in the summer, even Lafayette’s hands braiding his own hair a few hours earlier — but he knows what holding Alexander would mean, to him if not to anyone else. He knows that it would feel like a lie. The kind of touch John wants is not safe, and it comes with a price. 

“Wanna be here,” Alexander says, without opening his eyes. It’s the first he’s spoken and this in and of itself is unusual. The lateness of the hour is rarely much of a deterrent against Alexander’s insatiable need to be heard, so much so that John sometimes thinks Alexander speaks so he won’t be forgotten. As though silence were the same as abandonment.

John shrugs and tries to keep his face neutral, not that Alexander is looking at it anyway. John knows almost nothing about Alexander’s past, beyond the fact that Alexander’s an orphan and touchy about it. He’s guessed a lot — from Alexander’s accent, he assumes that the rumors about Scotland via the West Indies are true, and from that, he assumes that Alexander must be from some wealthy plantation family, maybe the son of a late-born laird — but most of what he know about Alexander is small, and odd, and intimate.

John knows Alexander will write late into the night, stopping only when his hands and wrists hurt too much to continue. John knows Alexander can go much longer without eating than the rest of them, and longer still without sleeping. He knows the ways Alexander’s voice changes between waking up in the morning and collapsing into bed at night, knows how furiously Alexander pushes against the basic human needs of his body. Knows, he thinks, the outermost edges of the raw place inside Alexander, the look in his eyes when he’s argued with Washington or argued with John — hard and terrified, at once defensive and split open. 

And John knows too that Alexander, when a very drunk John let slip that Henry Laurens once threatened to disown his own son, took John’s face between his hands and pressed his lips to John’s forehead with a rough, jagged ferocity. He knows that when Alexander found him sitting alone with a gun on the bed in front of him, Alexander barely restrained himself from punching John in the face.

Alexander shifts, breathing in the steady and predictable way of someone already asleep, and John realizes that he’s still sitting up, that he’s staring obviously at the places where Alexander’s face is obscured by shadow. 

_Pull yourself together_ , he tells himself. _You can’t have him_. He lies down and burrows under the blankets, curling up on his side with his back pressed to Alexander’s. The notches of their spines align like the rungs of a ladder.

John wakes sometime before dawn to a strangled noise and an elbow making sharp and abrupt contact with the side of his head. He swears and opens his eyes to see Alexander sitting up, the blankets tangled around his waist and his whole body visibly shaking. The moonlight coming in through the gap in the window dressings hits Alexander’s face and he looks wrecked, pale and distant and covered in sweat. John reaches out to touch Alexander and Alexander flinches away, although not before John feels that Alexander’s skin is cold and damp. Out of curiosity, John touches the bed where Alexander’s been sleeping and the linen is cold and damp too.

“Nightmare?” asks John, still groggy, pushing himself up until he’s propped on his elbows.

Alexander looks at him, turning his head without moving the rest of his body. “What?”

“Did you have a nightmare? It sounded like you were screaming.”

“No,” says Alexander. “Not a nightmare.”

He climbs out of bed and starts pacing the room, apparently oblivious to the cold. His clothes are looser on his body than they were the last time John saw him.

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

Alexander shakes his head and makes a low, unhappy noise John can’t identify.

“Make it stop, John,” he says.

John wraps a blanket around his shoulders and sits all the way up, cross-legged and shivering. Alexander, meanwhile, has tangled his right hand in his own hair and is pulling on it, grabbing fistfuls and tugging. It doesn’t look gentle.

“Make what stop?” John asks, not entirely sure he wants to know the answer.

“My _brain_ ,” says Alexander. “It won’t _stop_.”

Alexander’s complained to John about his brain before, but always because his mind wasn’t going fast enough, because it wasn’t working as quickly as he wanted it to, because words weren’t spilling out of it at their usual punishing speed. John’s never known him to wish for his brain to stop.

“I don’t — ” John begins, but before he can finish, Alexander’s in front of him. Alexander grabs John’s wrist, so tightly that the skin across his knuckles goes taut and smooth, and he sinks to the ground until he’s kneeling in front of the bed. John’s heart is pounding everywhere but in his chest and everything seems very far away, like he’s watching himself from a distance and waiting to see what will happen.  

Alexander rests his forehead against the edge of the mattress and guides John’s hand, which is half-closed in a fist, to his hair. John spreads his fingers so his palm is resting flat against the back of Alexander’s head, letting strands of Alexander’s hair tangle around his hand like thread.

“Alexander,” says John, voice hushed. “I don’t know — I don’t know what you want.” 

This, of course, is at least partly a lie — John thinks he does know what Alexander wants, and it’s raw and rough, angrier and more complicated than what his own loneliness asked of Lafayette. He’s imagined Alexander on his knees so many times, but it was never like this.

“Pull,” says Alexander, remaining impossibly still.

“Are you sure?”

“Pull my hair.”

John stays quiet in response. Were he more awake, he would probably be able to think of a good reason not to do what Alexander’s asking of him, but his defenses are weak from sleep and he _wants_ this. He makes his hand into a fist and it pulls the hair wrapped around his fingers away from Alexander’s scalp. He feels as though Alexander’s an instrument he’s expected to know how to play, as tightly wound as a cello and just as hard to master.

“Harder.”

John feels his face flushing but he makes the fist tighter anyway. Clenches his hand like he’s preparing to punch someone, clenches until Alexander makes a strangled, unreadable noise. It makes John’s stomach twist and drop and he wonders if this’ll be another thing he’ll learn to bury deep inside himself, another thing he’ll learn to block out with the sounds of fist against bone. 

But those concerns seem less important, now, than sliding out of the bed and kneeling next to Alexander. The room is freezing but John barely notices, feels warm and lightheaded instead — Alexander is here, this is real, and they’ve never done anything like this before. John readjusts his fist and tugs, sharp and quick, letting Alexander’s head come off the mattress and fall back, exposing his throat. 

“Yes,” hisses Alexander. “Yes. That.” 

And John keeps his hand where it is, keeps the pressure where it is, until Alexander’s breathing evens and slows. The tension in his face eases with every exhale, as though he’s sinking deeper into the sensation, and after several long, syrupy moments, he sags against John’s grip until John’s nearly holding him upright by the hair. John releases his fist and lets Alexander collapse sideways against his chest until he’s half sitting next to John and half lying across John’s lap. John leaves his hands by his sides. They’re burning, suddenly, and he doesn’t know what to do with them.

Alexander’s face is resting over John’s heart and his breath seems to warm John’s skin even through the layers of clothes John’s wearing. One of Alexander’s hands is resting flat and heavy against John’s thigh and John doesn’t want to move, doesn’t even want to breathe. His entire world has shrunk down to the places where their bodies are touching and it’s so fragile, as delicate and breakable as spun glass — one misstep and it will fall apart.

“Sleep, Alexander,” he says eventually, because it seems safest. 

As though John’s words are taking a long time to reach him — as though he’s somewhere far beneath the surface of himself — Alexander seems to register John’s suggestion several minutes after John makes it. He rises like a sleepwalker and nearly falls onto the bed, letting John shift him over towards the wall and climb in next to him. John can’t tell when Alexander falls asleep.

 _It’s the same thing Lafayette did for you_ , John tells himself. _It’s the same_. But he knows that isn’t true.

When John wakes in the morning, the light is thin and weak, a feeble imitation of day, and Alexander is already gone. But his luggage is on the ground by his bed, his clothing spilling out of it into piles on the floor, and his scent lingers in the room. The covers from Alexander’s bed have been stripped and John realizes, looking down, that they’re piled on top of his own.

He’s exhausted, which is not unusual, but today’s exhaustion is different. It’s the kind of frantic tiredness that comes from replacing sleep with coffee one too many times — his heart is racing even as his eyelids are heavy and intractable. The image of Alexander on his knees shimmers like a mirage in front of everything John sees and he knows how easy it would be to let that image become more than it was.

Alexander’s coming off weeks of serious illness, John’s been stir-crazy and restless for months — that they crashed into one another, without thought and without intention, isn’t so unexpected in such a situation. It won’t happen again. They’ll fall back into their routine, John will continue to want what he can’t have, they’ll fight side by side until there are no more battles left for them to take on. John’s treacherous mind imagines, for a moment, a time after the war has ended, the world spread out before them, and he shakes his head. He has a wife. He has a daughter. When the revolution is over, he’ll go back to them, and Alexander will take a wife of his own. Their lives will diverge like paths in a wood, with no indication of if or when they’ll intersect again.

“Get it _together_ , Laurens,” he hisses to himself, and hangs upside down off the side of the bed to get his boots out from under it without needing to step on the icy floor. 

Still, no amount of reprimanding himself can change the fact that as he re-dresses and shaves, the room feels different, somehow, like it’s been knocked sideways off its axis. His hand wrapped around his razor reminds him inexorably of his fist tangled in Alexander’s hair and his gut twists, again. He doesn’t know if it’s guilt or hunger that’s making him dizzy like this.

Downstairs, John finds the rest of Washington’s staff in a cluster by the fire, clapping Alexander on the back and grinning. It’s normal, for a moment, and John hovers a few feet back from the group, caught between approach and retreat. He tries to convince himself to cross the room, to put a hand on Alexander’s shoulder and invite him to pretend that they haven’t spent the night with their ribs cracked open and the hidden places exposed. But before he can move, John meets Alexander’s eyes over Meade’s shoulder and something shifts, quiet and strange, against John’s skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/), where I can frequently be found having emotions about John Laurens. I, like so many of us, crave validation, and comments make me all fuzzy inside.


	2. Chapter 2

As it turns out, John and Alexander do not fall back into their routine. For two days after Alexander’s return, John catches only glimpses of him as he rounds corners, disappears into Washington’s office, sneaks out of the kitchen late at night with bits of stale bread leftover from the dinner he missed. John stays up as late as he can too, wakes up as early as possible, but he can’t keep up with an Alexander who’s so manically determined not to be kept up with that he’s sleeping at his desk.

It makes John feel sick to his stomach, all of it, and the worry is insidious. It weighs on him, needles at the back of his brain, distracts him while he transcribes letters until he finds himself ruining his own work with splotches of ink and misspelled words. He’s unable to concentrate properly for hours at a time and more than one of his fellow aides resort to throwing crumpled up pieces of paper at his head with frustrated cries of, “ _Laurens!_ ” 

He knew, that first morning he woke to find Alexander gone, that the ground had shifted beneath their feet. But he did not expect Alexander, always so uncomfortable with silence, to avoid him like this, and he does not like to admit how much the avoidance hurts. He’s married, he knows that; even if he weren’t, there’s no possibility of a life after the war with Alexander, not in the way he wants. In the deepest parts of himself, he knows that what he wants isn’t finding stolen moments of solitude after long days of work, isn’t sitting side by side with Alexander in a courtroom, or in the legislature, or at a judge’s bench, but he knows also that those things are the best he can hope for.

Although, at the moment, he’s not even sure he can hope for that. It’s so easy, it’s always been so easy, to let himself be swept up in the power and persuasiveness of Alexander’s words, in the turrets and towers of the worlds they create, and he’s never regretted it. But he can’t stop himself wondering, now, if he shouldn’t have done what Alexander asked that night. Should he have said no and gone back to sleep? Should he have let Alexander wait out the aftermath of his nightmare alone?

No, John decides, whatever the consequences, he doesn’t want to be the kind of man who sleeps through something like that.

And it’s also wildly clear to John that Alexander, whatever he’s told Washington, is absolutely not fine. Whenever John sees Alexander rising from a desk or leaving a room or coming inside from the cold, Alexander looks as though standing and walking take tremendous effort. He braces himself against doorways when he walks through them and holds himself upright by leaning against tables and desks, walls and the bricks around fireplaces — he closes his eyes too often, he grimaces when he has to walk more than a few yards at a time. In short, he looks debilitated, and John finds himself torn on a daily basis between wanting to respect Alexander’s obvious wish for privacy and wanting to tie Alexander to his bed and force him to sleep for several days straight. 

The third morning after Alexander’s return finds them sitting several tables apart from one another in the crowded common room downstairs, their heads bowed over their work. Alexander is writing at half his usual speed, although he has a familiar look of furious intensity on his face, and the only sound in the room is the soothing, repetitive scratch of pen on paper. 

The door to Washington’s office creaks open and John’s surprised to see Mrs. Washington emerge, the polish and poise of her appearance in stark contrast to the ragged, exhausted faces of the men around her. John assumes she arrived sometime in the night, because all the aides except Alexander look up when she enters with expressions that suggest they hadn’t known she was in the house at all.

Mrs. Washington gives them all a small smile and makes her way across the room, her skirts rustling as she walks. She stops at the table where Alexander’s still bent over the letter he’s writing. While everyone else returns to work, John watches out of the corner of his eye as she lays her hand high on Alexander’s shoulder, thumb resting against the back of his neck and rubbing circles into his skin. It’s such an intimate gesture that John’s startled by it.

“Alexander,” she says, quiet enough that she’s barely audible from where John’s sitting. “I’m glad to see you back.”

John can see Alexander’s entire upper body startle and tense at her touch and John’s sure that Alexander, hyper-focused on what he was doing, hadn’t heard her approach. Alexander shifts in his chair until he’s sitting sideways, facing her, and her hand slides off him to hang by her side. 

“Mrs. Washington,” he says. In the slanted early-morning light, his skin looks gray and ghostly, and his expression reminds John irresistibly of a wounded animal, backing itself into a corner even as it tries to avoid being caught.

“How are you?” she asks.

Mrs. Washington, who John finds intimidating at the best of times and whose direct gaze frequently makes him feel as though he’s being examined under a microscope, is giving Alexander a soft, affectionate look that John’s never seen before. It makes him think of his own mother and he flinches involuntarily at the familiar stab of grief that still accompanies her memory.

Alexander shrugs and doesn’t say anything.

“That’s not really an answer to the question,” says Mrs. Washington. She lifts her arm again to press the inside of her wrist to Alexander’s forehead and leaves it there for a moment. He’s still staring at her, eyes wide, and it looks to John like the hand he’s using to hold his pen is shaking. He leans backwards until she has to stretch out her arm to touch him

“I’m not sick,” he says. “I swear. And I don’t have a fever.” His free hand is clenched into a fist in his lap.

“You’re warm,” says Mrs. Washington. “Perhaps you shouldn’t have returned to work so soon — I’m sure my husband can live without your services for another day or two.”

“I’m fine.” 

“It’s not doing anyone any good to ignore illness. It might seem noble to work through it, but a fever can be fatal.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” says Alexander again, and this time his voice goes loud — he’s clearly audible not just to everyone in the room but, John assumes, to everyone in the surrounding rooms as well. The sound of pen on paper has stopped entirely and all the aides are fidgeting and shifting uncomfortably in their chairs, looking around at one another, trying and failing not to stare at Alexander. Meade flinches visibly and attempts to catch John’s eye, as though he expects John to know what’s going on, but John ignores him. 

“Alexander,” says Mrs. Washington, getting quieter as if to compensate for Alexander’s sudden volume and lack of tact. “I didn’t mean — ” 

“Just _don’t_ ,” he says, still too loud. “Just don’t touch me.”

John’s definitely never heard Alexander speak like this to the General or to Mrs. Washington and he gives up on pretending to be working. He realizes that his face is warm and his heart is racing, as though he’s the one raising his voice to Mrs. Washington rather than Alexander.

Mrs. Washington’s face contorts in a combination of worry and something else, something that looks almost like pity. She nods and, without another word, pulls her shawl more tightly around her shoulders and disappears in the direction of the front door. Alexander stays exactly where he is, trembling and wild. 

John stands, without meaning to. The tension in the room is palpable and awful and everyone is staring at Alexander — none of them, not even John, have ever seen him break like this in public, and it occurs to John that Alexander is not in his right mind. Alexander, better than anyone, understands the importance of reputation, of the delicate, fragile balance that must be struck between making and protecting one’s name. John’s seen Alexander grit his teeth while being clapped on the back, grabbed round the shoulders, called son by men who aren’t his father — if he _were_ in his right mind, he wouldn’t endanger everything he’s worked for because he didn’t want a motherly hand on his shoulder. 

Alexander, meanwhile, seems to realize what he’s done. He’s still staring straight ahead, as though he’s seeing something the rest of them can’t, and when he turns his head the motion is jerky and strange. He gets to his feet when he notices they’re all watching him and John tries to get his attention, to communicate some kind of comfort, but Alexander’s eyes are glazed and distant — whatever world he’s witnessing is not the world in which his body exists. 

Alexander reaches blindly for his coat, which he’s hung over the back of his chair. He’s shaking too much to button it but he gets it over his shoulders anyway before he too disappears towards the front door.

The only sound apart from Alexander’s retreating footsteps is the snap of a branch breaking outside, overwhelmed by the weight of the new snow that’s fallen overnight, and John stays still for only a moments before he follows Alexander out the door. 

The cold hits him like a fist to the chest and it takes him a minute to adjust to the raspy, jagged feeling of the icy air his lungs. The ground around the Potts House is smeared a rusty, brownish red in places, evidence of the bloody feet and bloody horses that have walked across it, and only the new snowfall obscures the places that yesterday were treacherous and slick. The sun hasn’t fully risen and the world hovers at the place where dawn becomes day, the nocturnal creatures just now asleep and the rest not yet awake — everything is hushed and blanketed and the stillness seems springloaded, waiting to be set into motion.

John checks the stables first, stroking the noses of the horses as he does, but Alexander isn’t there, and he makes his way to Lafayette’s quarters instead. Besides John, Lafayette knows Alexander best — while their fellow aides might question Alexander’s behavior, might question whether he’s fit for duty or whether he deserves the reputation he’s earned, John knows Lafayette would not. Lafayette always provides, to the best of his abilities, a safe place to land.   

Lafayette’s quartered a short way from the main house, in a separate building made of stone and stucco, and John bangs on the front door. 

“Yes?” calls Lafayette indistinctly from inside. 

“It’s me,” John calls back, pressing his mouth to the crack between the door and its frame. 

Lafayette says something that sounds like Come in, which John does. The door to Lafayette’s bedroom is open and John raps on the wall next to it with his knuckles before crossing the threshold. 

Lafayette, packing his saddlebags and chewing on his lip in concentration, looks up. Lafayette has a tendency to overpack — this John knows from having watched him irritably squash his spare uniform into a bag much too small for it on several occasions during campaigns — and the state of his room when John enters indicates that he’s staying true to form. 

“Have you seen Alexander?” asks John, in response to Lafayette’s raised eyebrow. 

Lafayette shakes his head and stays silent for an uncomfortable length of time before saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” says John, automatically defensive. “Well, no, that’s not true. He ran out of the main house and I thought he might be here.” 

“Is he not well?”

John stares at Lafayette, waiting for Lafayette to realize what he’s asked, and after a moment, Lafayette snorts.

“Foolish question. Obviously he is not, given that he’s been walking around camp looking like death. Let me rephrase: is he becoming increasingly _un_ well?”

“I think he’s making himself sicker,” John says. “And I don’t think — I don’t know. I don’t think the fever’s gone.” He feels dishonest, blaming his worry on fever, but he thinks it would feel worse to share something that seems so secret. 

“And he left the main house, with a fever?”

“Yes,” John says again. “And he’s not here?”

“No,” says Lafayette, folding a relatively clean undershirt into a neat square before tucking it into the bag sitting open on the bed. “He’s not.”  

John opens and closes his mouth several times without making a sound.

“I think it’s my fault,” he says eventually. It was not what he meant to say, or even what he expected to say, and the voice that comes out of his mouth sounds tinny and strained and entirely unlike his own. He’s used to emptiness, and to the way the world sometimes drains of color and goes gray, and bleak, and unreachable; he’s accustomed, too, to the furious, riotous hatred that courses through him some days, the kind of hatred that he can’t sweat out and that keeps him awake at night, reliving the failures of his life in succession. 

What he’s not used to is panic. He’s not used to this kind of frantic worry about the welfare of another person or to the constancy of being so crushingly aware of someone else. It feels as though a band’s been stretched between his heart and Alexander’s and that each day pulls it tighter, threatening to break his ribs.

“If you were the General himself, John,” says Lafayette, “you could hardly stop Alexander from working. Even when he’s sick.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“Then I don’t think I know what you _do_ mean,” Lafayette says. When John stays quiet, he adds, “I can’t help if I don’t know what’s wrong, John.”

“We, ah — we had an argument,” says John. “A few nights ago.” It’s not true, not really, but it’s as close as he knows how to get without giving himself away. 

“And you think he’s working to avoid you?”

“More or less.” John keeps his eyes trained on the floor of the room, on the frame of the bed, on the seams of the blankets — on anything other than Lafayette.

“Why did you argue?” All the teasing has gone out of Lafayette’s voice and it makes John want to sit down on the bed, among the piles of clothing, and curl up in a ball until he learns to shut out the world.

John has no lie that even begins to capture the truth and even if he _could_ tell the truth, he doesn’t know what he would say. He certainly can’t tell Lafayette that Alexander had a nightmare, and that he’d comforted him by pulling his hair — not only does such an explanation seem small and trivial and entirely inadequate, but even the trivial version isn’t the kind of story he wants to be spreading. He’s not sure if he wants to do with Alexander the things he imagines Alexander and Lafayette want to do with women — although he doesn’t want to do those things with women, either — but he’s pretty sure that admitting to how he felt about Alexander’s hand on his thigh is tantamount to admitting that he does. He thinks of Martha, and the way he kept his eyes closed as he pushed himself into her, and it makes him want to be sick.

John feels his jaw twitch and realizes he’s been clenching it. He tries to relax the muscles and it makes his teeth ache. 

“I want things he doesn’t want,” says John, finally. He knows he shouldn’t say even that much — he knows the price of all his half-formed desires, and it’s a high price to pay — but he can’t stop himself. It’s too much, on his own, and he thinks he might burst from holding it in. 

John’s words hang in the air between them for a long moment, heavy and awkward, and Lafayette’s voice, when it reaches John’s ears, is startling, although Lafayette’s speaking quietly.  

“Is it not enough to know he cares for you? In whatever way he can?” 

And once again John stays silent, because once again he has no answer. The answer he wants to give is not the same as the answer that is true. 

“He’ll never put anyone before his work, John,” says Lafayette. “Not you, not me, not anyone. When he marries, I doubt he’ll put his wife before his work. You can’t change him — you can’t make him into someone he isn’t.”

John considers Martha again and feels the familiar weight of guilt settle low and nauseating in his gut. He resolves to write to her tonight, although he suspects that will make him feel worse, rather than better.

“You don’t think,” he asks finally, “that a man can prioritize other relationships? Besides his wife, and his children, I mean?”

Lafayette gives John a shrewd look and keeps his eyes fixed on John’s as he answers. 

“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he says, in a slow, measured tone that makes John suspect he’s trying to say something entirely different than what he’s actually saying. “Except that you would be wise not to put that question to anyone other than me.”

John opens his mouth and Lafayette holds up a hand. “John. You know what I’m telling you.”

Unsure if he wants to hit Lafayette or hide until his eyes stop burning, John nods. 

“It’s not that I don’t want you to be happy,” Lafayette says, his voice much softer now. He’s still standing beside his bed and he takes a step towards John before hesitating. “But if you were caught — your reputation would survive, I think, because of your father. But his would not.”

“I know.” A pause, then, “How long have you known?”

“I knew the first time I saw you look at him.”

“And you said nothing?”

“It was not my place to speak of it.”

John wipes his eyes with the back of his hand and his hand comes away damp. He nods again. 

“I should let you finish packing,” he says. 

“It can wait,” Lafayette says, “if you need it to.”

John shakes his head, quick and sharp, and his movements seem stilted and awkward, even to himself. “I should go.”

“Go look for him, then, if you need to. Just don’t freeze.”

John manages a laugh, although it comes out sounding hollow. “I won’t.”

And, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his coat, he turns to leave. Before he gets to the door, he pauses. 

“When do you leave for Canada?”

“Five days. Maybe sooner.”

“Come find me, then, before you go.”

“Of course, John,” says Lafayette. He sounds so kind, so unbearably understanding, that the empty place in John’s chest yawns wider. Suddenly, he’s acutely aware of standing in the cold, surrounded by death and starvation, and feeling sorry for himself because Lafayette is going to Canada and it feels like being left alone.

John gives an odd, horrible salute, his back still to Lafayette, and lets himself back out into the snow. He sets off towards the forest, not paying much attention to where he’s walking, and he hasn’t been moving for very long before he sees a man dressed in blue standing with his back against a tree, the metal of his coat buttons catching and throwing the light.

Not entirely aware of doing so, John speeds up and covers the distance between them in several long strides. Standing in front of Alexander, their breath visible and intermingling, John can see that Alexander’s eyes are swollen and that the palms of his hands are covered in the crescent-shaped imprints of his nails. His coat sleeves are pushed up slightly to reveal wrists marked up and down with scratches.

“I’m sorry,” says Alexander, before John can speak. “About the other night. I won’t ask that of you again.” He’s pausing in unusual places, compensating for the shuddering breaths he’s taking, and John’s fairly sure he’s already been out in the cold too long. Shifting his weight from foot to foot, John tries to think of the best way to get Alexander to come back inside as quickly as possible, and his mind comes up blank.

John pushes his hair out of his eyes with one hand. “I didn’t mind. I _don’t_ mind.” A pause, then, “I thought that was obvious.”

“ _I_ mind,” says Alexander. He’s looking at John with a fierce, bewildering intensity. “I don’t want other people taking on the burden of my weakness.”

John wants to reach out and touch Alexander, to take Alexander’s hands in his own, but Alexander’s entire body is rigid and it seems to John that reaching for him would be about as effective as trying to comfort a creature you’ve caged.

“It’s not — you’re not a burden. It was just a nightmare,” says John. He pauses, and adds, “Wasn’t it?”

Alexander doesn’t answer. “I heard her voice and I thought she was my mother,” he says instead.

“Mrs. Washington’s?” 

Alexander still doesn’t really appear to be listening to him. “I thought I was in St. Croix and I thought she was my mother,” he says again. He grips his right wrist with his left hand and digs his nails in, hard.

John doesn’t bother trying to get him to explain, about his mother or St. Croix — he’ll save that for later, when they’re not outside in the snow — and instead he reaches for Alexander’s hands, tugging gently until Alexander lets go of his own wrist.

“Is it your brain?” asks John, his voice softer than he expected against the hush of the untouched snow. “Can you not get it to stop?”

Alexander finally looks him in the eye, and nods. “I can’t stop it without sleeping and I can’t sleep without dreaming and I can’t dream without waking up.”

John takes a step closer to Alexander, until they’re almost chest to chest.

“Let me,” says John.  

Alexander’s eyes go wide. “Really?”

“Yes, you idiot,” says John. “Did you think I didn’t enjoy it?”

“Well — yes. Essentially.”

John shakes his head. “Idiot,” he says again, before closing the last few inches of the gap between them. Their chests are flush now and John braces himself against the tree, a hand on either side of Alexander’s head. It occurs to him, briefly and despite the frantic rhythm of his heart, that he’s effectively trapping Alexander, blocking him in. He thinks about the look on Alexander’s face not an hour before, desperate and cornered, but Alexander doesn’t look like that now — instead, his pupils are blown and he’s swallowing hard. John’s not sure what’s changed, or why Alexander seems to want John to cage him like this — but then, he’s also not entirely sure why he wants to be the one doing the caging, apart from the deep, instinctive tug, low in his stomach, that’s telling him to keep going.

 _Stop it_ , John tells himself. _Inside. Go inside. This is too fast, you are moving too fast, go inside._

“What do you want?” he asks instead. 

Alexander’s mouth is hanging slightly open and his breathing is heavy. He closes his eyes. “Hurt me,” he says, in a whisper. 

“Do you — how?”

“However you want,” he says. “I just — I want — I want what you want.” 

John stops pinning Alexander against the tree and takes his wrist in his hand instead, setting his teeth against the thin skin there. He pauses, not applying pressure, until Alexander moans. 

“ _John_ ,” says Alexander, and John bites, pulls the skin into his mouth and sucks. He knows he’s leaving a bruise, knows it will be deep and purple and that it will hurt every time it’s touched, and something about that knowledge makes his stomach twist. Alexander belongs, in this small way, to him.

Alexander’s head is thrown back against the tree trunk behind him and even though John knows he can’t leave marks on Alexander’s throat — he can’t mark Alexander’s skin anywhere that can’t be covered by clothing — he still wants to. His entire body is on fire with how badly he wants to and Alexander’s making desperate, high-pitched noises now, pulling his lower lip into his mouth and biting down each time John sinks his teeth harder into Alexander’s wrist. 

John pulls his mouth back, his lips wet with his own spit, and pins the wrist he’s holding against the tree by Alexander’s hip. He tangles his other hand in Alexander’s hair and, making eye contact as he does so, clenches his hand into a fist again. He pulls harder this time, and he lets himself enjoy it — he lets himself enjoy the strangled, guttural sound Alexander makes, lets himself enjoy the way his own head is clear and the way the world is burning with color.

“Shirt,” says Alexander. “John, _shirt_.”

“Alexander,” John says, trying to catch his breath. “It’s freezing.”

“I don’t care. I don’t _care_.”

John knows _he_ should care, if Alexander doesn’t, but he’s fumbling to untie Alexander’s cravat anyway, pulling the collar of Alexander’s shirt open just enough to expose his collarbones. His hands find their way to Alexander’s waist before he can stop himself, before he can think, and then his lips are pressed to the hollow at the base of Alexander’s throat, his teeth are scraping over bone and he’s leaving bruises there too, biting down hard and letting the pressure and the pain wrench a symphony of sound from Alexander’s mouth. 

They’re both panting and, in their frenzy, they’ve both forgotten about the cold. John digs the fingers of one hand into Alexander’s waist, as deep as he can, and fists the other one around the undone cravat still draped around Alexander’s neck. He lets his forehead rest against Alexander’s jaw and realizes that Alexander’s wrapping his own fingers around John’s fist.

“Tighter,” Alexander says.

“What?”

“Pull it tighter.”

“You won’t be able to breathe.”

Alexander just shakes his head, eyes shut. 

“I trust you,” he says, and the words shoot straight down John’s spine.

John adjusts his fist until it’s pressed against the base of Alexander’s windpipe and the fabric of the cravat is pulled taut, biting into the skin. Alexander’s head falls back, putting more pressure on the blood vessels that run along the sides of his neck, and he gasps. He scrabbles his hands over John’s waist and hips and back, breath rattling, and John feels dizzy. This is Alexander, who matters more to him than almost anyone else in the world — why does the idea of wrapping his hand around Alexander’s throat, of raking his nails up and down his back until he screams, make him feel like this?

John releases his grip on the cravat when he feels Alexander’s muscles start to go loose against him. Alexander’s eyes snap open and then roll back into his head at the sudden influx of air into his lungs. His hands are resting flat against John’s chest now and he slumps forward slightly, his forehead dropping to John’s shoulder. 

“I can take more,” he says. His voice is raw and rough and John’s so tempted to take him at his word.

“Not here,” John manages. “Not like this.”

John feels Alexander nod before straightening up. They’re once more standing face-to-face and it’s bizarre, returning to their original positions, like waking from a dream and seeing for the first time the shape of the world. 

“God, John,” says Alexander. His eyes are half-closed again and he’s flushed, taking deep stuttering breaths and leaning back against the tree, as though his knees are buckling. “I feel like I’m splitting apart.”

John nods. “I know.”

“No,” says Alexander. “I mean it. You touch me and it feels like I’m breaking open.”

“I _know_ ,” John says again. Moving to stand beside Alexander, he slides an arm around his waist to help him off the tree. The cold and the sickness and the exhaustion all seem to hit Alexander at once because he sags against John, staggering as though he’s drunk, and John huffs at the sudden deadweight. 

“ _Jesus_ ,” he says. “You need to sleep.” 

Alexander makes a noise that might be agreement and they set off towards the main house, John still supporting him and helping him walk. They work side by side, for the rest of the day. They fall asleep early. That night, Alexander shares John’s bed. 

But as he’s falling asleep, John remembers what Alexander said, just after John found him at the tree: _I thought I was in St. Croix and I thought she was my mother._ Technically, it doesn’t tell John anything he didn’t already know, or at least suspect — that Alexander’s an orphan from the West Indies is not a surprise. 

But John knows the look he saw in Alexander’s eyes, because he’s seen soldiers with that look before, once or twice. He’s watched men lose their sense of time and place, watched as they looked at the world around them and saw a foreign, unknowable thing. He wouldn’t have expected it from Alexander, and he’s not positive that he’s correct in his assumptions in the first place, but he supposes there’s no way to tell, with these things. Maybe one day you wake up to find that the pain of your life has caught up to you.

And, as Alexander sighs in his sleep and pulls the blankets tighter under his chin, John realizes that he still doesn’t know what they’re doing, or if they’ll do it again when they’re not trying so hard to keep themselves from stumbling into the sinkholes of their own minds. When they’re not reaching, blindly, for a future they don’t understand and withdrawing their hands to find them stained with the ruins of the past.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lafayette’s trip to Canada is a real thing — he left on January 28th to try to win Canada for the French. (I’ve tried my best to keep this story relatively historically accurate wrt what happened when, because “Right Hand Man” is a bit too much timeline soup for my writing comfort.) 
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/), where I can frequently be found having emotions about John Laurens. I, like so many of us, crave validation, and comments make me all fuzzy inside.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aaaand we’re done! Thanks for reading everyone! This is the last chapter of this particular fic, but I’m planning more stories in this verse, so stay tuned if you enjoyed this one. : ) 
> 
> Again, many thanks to [ossapher](http://archiveofourown.org/users/ossapher) for beta-ing. <3

The following afternoon, John and Alexander share the common room with Meade and the three of them work in distracted silence. Meade can’t seem to sit still — he gets up to pace circles around John’s desk every few minutes and blows his ink dry with unnecessary vigor — and John’s about one more long-suffering sigh away from sticking his fingers in his ears. There’s nothing like being trapped in the same house with the same group of men for weeks on end to wear his patience thin.

But John has to admit that focusing feels harder than it normally does today. He’s even more tired than usual, given how long it’d taken him to fall asleep the night before, and he knows he must look it, but he feels the weight of his and Alexander’s secret heavy and warm in his belly, feels it expand to fill his whole chest. He wonders if this is what it’s like, courting someone and hiding it — the anticipation so strong it borders on nausea, the constant fear that someone, somehow, has found out. 

Alexander, for his part, is hunched over his work with only a fraction of yesterday’s edginess. He’s still coughing, and he’s still too thin, but he’s writing at almost normal speed and his eyes are burning with the particular vicious determination that can only mean he’s lecturing someone many ranks above him.  

Before John can wrench his eyes away from Alexander, Meade slings his feet up onto the desk in front of him and arches back over his chair, tipping it precariously onto its back legs. 

“You’re gonna break it if you keep doing that,” says John, through slightly gritted teeth. He can hear the chair’s joints squeaking in protest already.    
Meade laughs and lets the chair fall forward onto all four legs with a thud. He runs a hand through his hair and gives Hamilton a wide, wicked smile. 

“So,” he says. “Ham. I hear you met someone in Albany.”

Alexander looks up from his letter. John’s not sure if he imagines the way Alexander’s eyes flicker over his face, light as a moth, before landing on Meade. 

“Briefly,” Alexander says, grinning. The grin is a little less wide than usual, a little less warm at the eyes, but it’s genuine, and John hates it. 

“What’s her name?”

“Elizabeth. Elizabeth Schuyler.”

Meade whistles and were they discussing anyone but Alexander, John would whistle too. He’s never met the Schuylers but he knows who they are, and he knows how much money they have. Any man would be lucky to marry into their family.

“And,” continues Alexander, “it was one dinner. I’d hardly call that _meeting someone_.”

“Have you written to her?” asks Meade, tapping his fingers against his desk in curiosity. John concentrates on the pattern Meade’s fingers are drumming, tries to imagine the melody it would make if it were superimposed on a piano. 

“I’ve been a little busy,” says Alexander, raising one eyebrow. 

“What’s she like?”

“None of your business.”

“Fair enough.” Meade stands up and sits on the edge of his desk instead, legs spread and heels swinging side to side. “What about you, Laurens? Met anyone interesting lately?”

“What, while we’ve been stuck here? I’m not the one who’s been riding up and down the Hudson on important errands. Or dining in Albany,” says John.

John’s sure he doesn’t imagine the weight of Alexander’s eyes on him this time. It makes the back of his neck tingle with the ghost of an invisible hand and the muscles between his shoulderblades tense until the sensation passes. 

“Save it for the tavern, Meade,” says Alexander. 

“What tavern? Like Laurens just said — we’re stuck here.”

“Well then, you’ll be saving it for a long time, won’t you?”

John gets to his feet slowly, lightheaded and off-balance. His chest is growing cold and the cold is spreading throughout his body, creeping along the pathways of his ribs and down his spine as though following the roots of a tree. 

“John?” Alexander’s standing up as well, leaving Meade seated and open-mouthed, looking unsure. 

“I….left something upstairs,” John says, and gathers his work in his arms before slipping out of the room. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alexander start after him at the same time as he hears Washington’s office door open. Lafayette’s voice drifts out, rapid and intense, but Washington’s cuts across it.

“Hamilton,” Washington calls, sounded exhausted. “I need you.”

And so John escapes unpursued. He takes the stairs two at a time and, when he’s safe in their shared room, shuts the door and leans his back against it. He takes a few long, deep breaths and waits for the awful pounding of his heart in his ears to stop.

Alexander’s told all of them about the women he’s courted and kissed. He’s told their friends, leaning across tables in taverns, drunk and loose at the limbs; he’s told John, walking back to headquarters through the late-night Philadelphia streets, an arm wrapped around John’s waist. And John’s become practiced, over time, at blocking from his mind both the words and the pictures they paint. He’s learned to hum and nod when Alexander pauses, he’s learned to change the subject when Alexander finishes. Enough control and he doesn’t have to think about Alexander’s hand under a stranger’s skirts or a stranger’s lips on Alexander’s neck.

This, though, feels different. John thinks about his own lips, pressed against the slope of Alexander’s jaw, and he knows that he has no right, really, to his anger or his to strange, malformed grief. Alexander owes him nothing. Whatever they’re doing does not preclude Alexander from happiness, from a wife and a child, and John should be glad that Alexander has a chance at the kind of joyous future that he himself does not. 

_This is good_ , John tells himself. _You haven’t ruined him. You haven’t made him like you._

But as much as John hates the part of himself that wants Alexander, as often as he falls asleep imagining a surgeon slicing him open from pelvis to collarbone and plucking something blackened and stained from his belly, he can’t stop himself muffling a scream with the pile of blankets on the bed. 

John spends the remaining hours before sunset in a fury of productivity and, when he finishes, the last of the gray daylight has faded. In the absence of work, he finds his skin crawling and crackling with energy. Sitting still makes his muscles ache and twitch and, unable to stay where he is, John shrugs on his coat and slips back downstairs. He passes no one on his way out the front door and he breathes in deep once he’s closed it as quietly as possible behind him. The air burns the inside of his nose and makes his lungs spasm in pain and he relishes it, closes his eyes and savors it. 

A good distance from the doorway, three enlisted men are leaning against the slick stone of the house’s outer walls, huddled around a single candle and passing a flask back and forth between them. They’re keeping their voices low and John can just barely make out what they’re saying.

“This is unbelievable,” says the shortest of them, shivering and reaching for the flask. “It really is. Anyone else — anyone competent — and we’d be out of this fucking hellhole already.”

“Say that closer to his office, why don’t you,” says the one holding the candle.

“Oh, he can’t hear us,” says the third. “He’s too busy looking for more godforsaken fields to camp out in for months on fucking end. Him and the fucking Frenchman.”

John knows immediately that they’re talking about Washington and it’s all the excuse he needs.

“Excuse me,” he says, stepping out of the shadow of the doorway and crossing the distance between them in a few strides. The muscles in his legs are flexing and loosening, readying for a fight. 

The men start when they see him and nearly extinguish the candle in their haste to hide the flask behind their backs. This, admittedly, wasn’t exactly the reaction John was expecting. 

“Lieutenant Colonel,” the one holding the candle says, and John squints at him in the darkness. 

“Give me that,” he says, holding his hand out for the flask. When none of them move, he adds, “I _said_ , give it here.”

One of the men thrusts it into John’s hands and folds his arms across his chest, as though daring John to say anything more. 

_Fool_ , thinks John. He’s prepared to bet money that the flask contains nothing they’re permitted to have and he uncorks it and takes a long drink, keeping his eyes fixed on their tight, furious faces. The whiskey is sharp and immediate on his tongue and he can tell from the taste — dark and sweet, vanilla and oak at the back of his throat — that it’s expensive. It’s _good_. 

“Where’d you get this? The black market?”

None of them say anything. The man who gave John the flask is staring at him with the kind of hatred that makes John’s gut twist in anticipation — here is a man whose pain will cause John no immediate guilt.

John watches the flicker of the candle reflected in the dark of the man’s eye and before he realizes what he’s doing, he’s dropped the flask and his fist has made contact with the man’s face. John hears the scrape of the man’s uniform against the stone as he slides down the wall to to the ground, clutching his nose. 

The man’s friend swears loudly and lunges for John in turn, the candle falling from his hands and sputtering out in the damp of the snow. John steps sideways out of his reach and grabs his wrist as it flashes through the air. John twists until the man’s facing away from John with his arm pinned behind his back and then kicks out viciously, the toe of his boot making contact with the backs of the man’s knees. The man collapses forward and John knees him in the small of the back, the torque on his shoulder enough to dislocate it. 

The third man, meanwhile, has gotten his wits about him and, while John’s using his free hand to hit whatever’s in reach, lands a punch on the side of John’s face. John yells, high and startling against the quiet that’s settled like a blanket over the camp, and releases his grasp on the kneeling man’s wrist. The pain in his cheekbone and the side of his nose is immediate and it blossoms and mutates until it’s all he can see, until sensation becomes color and it’s dizzying, he’s alive and his heart is beating and nothing matters but right now, right here, this protracted second. 

He clutches his face for just a moment before retaliating, kicking the man who’s just punched him in the shins until he falls to the ground and John can straddle him, get a rhythm going with his fists. John barely hears the shouts of the men around him, the explosion of noise from inside, the creak of the front door opening.

“That’s _enough_!”

The dim light from inside the house throws the four of them into indistinct, unflattering relief. John’s on the ground, the knees of his breeches soaked through with melting snow, and his knuckles are bloody. He licks his lips and tastes copper — his nose must be bleeding too. The man beneath him has thrown up his arms to cover his face and John hadn’t even noticed that he’d been hitting the man’s upraised wrists.

John looks up and sees Alexander in the doorway, an inscrutable look on his face. 

“I said, that’s enough,” repeats Alexander. “All of you. Get up.”

John gets to his feet, his ears roaring. Alexander’s voice is all at once too loud and very far away and John staggers when he stands, his balance thrown by the blow to his face.

“Sir,” says the man John punched first, pushing himself back up the wall. “He — ”

“I don’t care,” says Alexander. “Get inside.”

“But — ”

“ _Now_.” Alexander’s shorter than all of them but it wouldn’t occur to John to disobey him now. He’s motionless, lit from behind, and John’s stomach does an odd somersault that might be guilt and might be affection.

“Yes, sir.” One of the men picks up the candle from where it’s rolled against the side of the house and another picks up the flask, which has spilled its contents into the snow, and they stumble indoors, looking considerably the worse for wear. 

“Hamilton,” comes Washington’s voice. “What’s going on out there?”

“Nothing, sir,” says Alexander, not taking his eyes off John. “Everything’s fine.”

Washington makes a skeptical sort of sound but John can’t hear footsteps. He supposes Washington’s too tired and too busy to come see for himself.

Alexander’s still glaring at John and John goes to him, not sure what to expect. Once John’s gotten close enough, Alexander grabs his upper arm and drags him bodily inside and up the stairs, letting the door swing shut behind them with an almighty crash. When they’ve entered their room and locked their own door, Alexander lights a candle and takes John’s face in his hands, methodically pressing against the painful places to check for damage. When he seems satisfied that John hasn’t seriously injured himself, he lets go and drops heavily onto the unused bed. John shoves aside the pile of blankets on the bed they’ve been sharing and mirrors him.

“John. What the hell.”

John presses his fingers gingerly to his nose as well. It hurts and it’s swelling and he shrugs at Alexander, not meeting his eyes.

“What do you mean, what the hell?”

“What do you think I mean? You just took on three men at once for no discernable reason. What if Washington had come to the door instead of me? How would you’ve explained that?”

John shrugs again. “I was angry.”

“You were _angry?_ At them?”

“Not at them. At everything.” He remembers, dimly, the flask of whiskey and the overheard insults, but those things seem so disconnected from the rage and the restlessness still boiling beneath the surface of his skin.

Alexander worries at the heel of one boot with the toe of the other. “Did you — do you wish you were doing those things to me?”

“I’m not angry with _you_ — ” John says, lying through his teeth, but Alexander interrupts.  

“That’s not what I meant. I meant — would it help? With the anger?”

“Would it help to hurt you, you mean?”

“Yes.”

John nods, in spite of himself, and without another word, Alexander crosses the room and sinks to his knees in front of John. He takes John’s hand and wraps it around his own throat. 

“I told you I could take more,” he says. “Make me.”

John doesn’t move, either to retract his hand or squeeze it tighter, and he stares at Alexander until his eyes go dry from not blinking. 

“I can’t.”

“What? Why?”

“I can’t just let you — I don’t _understand_ this, Alexander, I don’t understand we’re doing or how this happened and I need to, I can’t hurt you without understanding.”

Alexander, still on his knees, says, “You can hurt other people without understanding.”

John pulls his hand back like he’s been burned.

“I’m sorry,” says Alexander. “That was out of line.”

“It wasn’t,” says John, shutting his eyes for a long moment. “But my point stands. I have to know.”

Alexander drops back until he’s sitting cross-legged on the floor. John pulls his own legs up onto the bed until he’s cross-legged too, still a mirror image from three feet up. It reminds John of a stalemate, or a truce, this waiting — both of them trying to figure out if and when the other will act.

“Well, what do _you_ think we’re doing?” asks Alexander, sounding as though he’s trying to think through strategy and using his conversational partner as a sounding board. He might as well be tracing sprawling shapes across a map with his finger, watching numbers that no one else can see shift and change in the air in front of his eyes.

“I’m hurting you. And you like it.”

“That’s true,” says Alexander. “Do you have a name for that?”

“No.”

“No, me either. Do you need one?”

John doesn’t answer that question. “Tell me why,” he says instead.

Alexander gives him a sharp look and then closes his eyes. “Sometimes I — I lose my mind. Or I lose myself, I suppose, when my body’s failing too. And the pain brings me back. Giving you _control_ brings me back.”

“Is that why you woke up in the middle of the night? And why you ran out on Mrs. Washington the other day?” When Alexander nods, John adds, “But why — ”

“Why do I lose my mind?

“More or less.”

“I don’t know. Not entirely. Sometimes things are just — they’re too much like my childhood. Or they remind me too much of it, anyway, they remind me of what happened to me back then. And then I’m just not _here_ anymore, I’m there, and sometimes it’s hard to come back.” He pauses and adds, “Getting sick reminds me of my childhood, and my parents. More than anything, I think.”

“Your father — was he….did he?” John doesn’t know anything about parents except what he’s learned from his father, but if Henry Laurens was bad enough to make John wake up in a cold sweat every now and then, he can only imagine what Alexander’s father might have done to cause this.

“I don’t really know my father,” says Alexander, so quiet that he’s almost drowned out by the evening sounds of the house settling on its foundation. “He left us in St. Croix. When I was ten.”

“And your mother — ?”

“Died. Three years later. They weren’t married, not technically”

At this, John’s eyes widen in spite of himself, but before he can decide how to respond, something else clunks into place. 

“She died of a fever,” John blurts out. 

Alexander jerks his head in something that looks like a nod. “She was holding me. When she died. We were both sick, but I didn’t — I survived.” He takes a breath and adds, “We didn’t really have anything left, after that. All her books, and her store, and everything — it all got sold.”

John doesn’t have to ask what comes next. A child in the Caribbean, with no father and no money — there’s only a few ways that can go, and none of them are kind. He wants to drop to his own knees, to get on the floor with Alexander and hold him, but Alexander’s face is set in a harsh, twisted mask and John thinks that any interference on his part might ruin the precarious hold Alexander’s got on the present. 

“And when — when you can’t stop thinking?” he asks instead, careful to keep any notes of pity out of his voice.

Alexander looks up at John and the mask melts a little, softens until his features look like his own again. 

“It’s just — it’s like I’m there, with her, and she’s dying over and over again. And I can’t stop it happening, and if I manage to think about something else, then I think about that over and over again. I’ll run through all the letters I have to write, or I’ll try to remember everything in every book I’ve ever read, or I’ll think about every possible way I could die the next day, and it just stays like that, for hours. It feels like my brain’s on fire.”

“So we’re putting the fire out,” says John.

“Yes,” says Alexander. “But it’s more than that, too, I think. I — I’ve never trusted anyone like this. I’ve never given anyone this kind of _power_ over me, and giving it to you — it’s like everything’s quiet, and I don’t have to think about anything but how it feels. About how you feel, when you touch me.”

“Come here,” John says, because he knows no language for the constriction in his chest. His voice is throaty and hoarse, although he’s been mostly silent, and he gestures for Alexander to join him on the bed. 

Alexander rises to his knees again, his eyes wide and hesitant.

“Are you — are you sure?”

“Yes, idiot. Why wouldn’t I be? You’re the one who’s got the right to be mad at me, not the other way around.” But he knows, deep down, why Alexander’s hesitant. John’s father is the richest man in the colonies. John’s name opens doors before he’s had a chance to open his mouth. If his father were here in John’s place, Alexander would be reduced to nothing but these few facts he’s laid out before them — his dead mother, his missing father, his illegitimate birth.

Alexander sits slowly down on the bed next to John and John takes Alexander’s hand in his own, tracing the lines on Alexander’s palm with his index finger. He feels too full to meet Alexander’s eyes but he can feel the weight of them on his face.

“Tell me what you’re getting from this, John.”

“From hurting you, you mean.”

“Yes.”

“It just _feels_ good. It makes the world — clearer, I guess. Sometimes everything goes gray, and then when we do this, it’s color again, and you’re right there, and you’re — ”

“I belong to you,” Alexander finishes for him. He ducks his head, just a fraction, and adds, “And you to me.” 

John nods and his whole body goes slack with the relief of hearing it said out loud, the relief of knowing that Alexander understands what he means by possession. He imagines that with each bruise he leaves on Alexander’s skin, a matching mark is carved into the surface of his own bones. That if he were to die and his body were discovered, the most resilient parts of himself would never go unclaimed.

“Do you want to keep doing it?” John asks.

“Yes,” says Alexander. He makes it sound so simple.

“And you don’t — you’re not ashamed of it. Of wanting it.”

Alexander pauses and says, with a half-smile playing at his lips, “Every lad had a lover or friend who took care of his education and shared in the praise or blame of his virtues or vices.”

“Plutarch.”

“Yes. And if it’s good enough for Plutarch, it’s good enough for me.” After a quick, stilted silence, during which they both know what question comes next, he asks, “Do you want a lover, John?” 

John’s first thought is _Yes_. He knows he wants Alexander, in some deep and fundamental way, and what else can it mean to want? But, at the same time, he can’t think about lovers without thinking about Martha, and about how wrong it had felt to touch her. About the way the world had spun around him, nauseating and unreal, as he staggered from her bed. He doesn’t know if he can bear that kind of shame again.

“I’ve….had one before,” John says. “It wasn’t — she was lovely. But it wasn’t good.”

Alexander gives John a long look. “This can be different,” he says, “if you like.”

“It’s already different.”

“It is.”

John takes a moment to think, Alexander’s hand still relaxed and open in his lap. What he wants, right now and ignoring everything that’s come before, is to take Alexander’s shirt off and leave bruises up and down the length of his torso. He wants to memorize the way Alexander’s face twists when John sucks at his skin, to catalog the noises Alexander makes as he shifts and squirms under John’s hands, to lose himself in the way Alexander’s breath steadies and evens when he sinks beneath the surface of the pain.

“Have you ever done this? With anyone else?” John asks.

“No. Have you?”

John shakes his head. Alexander speaks about this with so little hesitation, with so little shame, and John has no context for that kind of vulnerability. He’s afraid to touch it for fear it will break. If Alexander’s not his lover, it’s easier, somehow, to make himself believe that what they’re doing isn’t wrong. If he and Alexander are something sideways from lovers, something stranger and harder to name, the harder it is as well for the memories to escape from their hiding place in his gut and cloud his vision. Looking at the bruises on Alexander’s wrist, he doesn’t see his father, or Martha, or all the things he’s failed to be — he just sees Alexander. And he doesn’t want to share Alexander, not like this, not yet. No hands but his have touched Alexander like this.

John reaches for Alexander’s cravat and rests his fingers against the knot.

“Can I?”

“ _Yes_.” Alexander’s voice cracks and he’s staring at John’s hands as though he’s never seen them before. 

John pulls the cravat from around Alexander’s neck like he’s moving through water. He doesn’t want to miss this. He doesn’t want to look back later and realize he went so fast that he didn’t notice the way Alexander’s breath stutters as his clothes are removed, the ripple of his throat when he swallows. 

Once the cravat’s been tossed to the ground and he’s undone the buttons of Alexander’s vest, he slides his hands along Alexander’s chest and up over his shoulders, pushing the vest off and letting it fall onto the bed behind them. They’re both breathing heavily, their chests rising and falling to some invisible metronome, and John slips his hands underneath the fabric of Alexander’s shirt. The skin there is smooth and warm and Alexander, apparently less patient than John, whimpers and pulls the shirt off over his head.

“John. Please.”

John gives Alexander’s shoulders a gentle shove until Alexander’s lying back on the bed, his lips parted and his eyelids fluttering in time with his breathing. John shifts so he’s straddling Alexander, sitting back on Alexander’s hips, and before he can think about the heat curling low in his belly, about how close his cock is to Alexander’s, he sets his teeth against the skin over Alexander’s ribs. 

Alexander hisses and catches his moan in his throat before it can escape his mouth. It turns into a strangled, choking sound.

“Shh,” John whispers, raking his nails up and down Alexander’s sides in long, steady strokes. “You have to be quiet, Alexander. You have to be so, so quiet.”

John’s mind is bright and clear as new glass. His blood hums through his veins and every part of him is trembling; he can’t think about anything except Alexander coming apart in front of him and underneath him and all around him. Every sensation is magnified tenfold and even the soft scratchy sound of his wool trousers rubbing against Alexander’s is thunderous, is everywhere, is too much. He begins to leave a trail of bite marks across Alexander’s chest and Alexander gasps every time he sinks his teeth in, writhes every time he starts sucking. Alexander’s fists are clenching and unclenching on the blankets beside him and his sides are raw and red with scratches. 

John’s lost track of time, swept up in the taste of Alexander’s skin and the high-pitched noises he’s making to stop himself crying out, when Alexander reaches for John’s wrist and places John’s hand, for the second time that evening, at his throat. 

John lets his eyes fall shut. He can feel Alexander’s pulse, light and quick as a butterfly trapped between cupped hands, and his own heart pounds in his chest with such force that John wonders if his body can contain it. It feels like a reply and the strength of it fills his throat and his head until the only real thing left in the world is the syncopated rhythm of his heartbeat and Alexander’s as they call out to one another, as they settle slowly into synchronization.

And so, forcing his eyes open, John squeezes gently, flexing his fingers around Alexander’s neck until the ridges of Alexander’s windpipe are pressed tight to the skin between his thumb and forefinger. For a moment, Alexander looks panicky and his hands scrabble instinctively against John’s arm, but then his eyelids go heavy and he moans, a low needy sound that makes John shiver in anticipation. 

“Good?” John asks, not taking his eyes from Alexander’s face. Alexander’s cheeks are flushed and his mouth has fallen open, his lips full and damp. 

Alexander makes a face that looks like exasperation and he reaches for John’s wrist again, pushes John’s hand down harder against his throat. John leans down to press a kiss to Alexander’s forehead and then obliges, cutting off air until Alexander’s breath rattles as he inhales.

John maintains the pressure until the tension leaks out of Alexander’s muscles and his body starts to go slack. Then John takes his hand away and strokes Alexander’s hair instead, waiting for Alexander to come back to the surface of his body. He imagines Alexander swimming up from the depths of some unimaginable lake and when Alexander’s eyes open again, they look somehow darker and deeper than before. 

“Okay?” John asks, in a whisper.

“Yes,” Alexander says, reaching for John’s chest and arms. John grins and traces the hollows around Alexander’s collarbones with his pointer finger, drags his nails hard down Alexander’s chest from shoulder to hip. Alexander hisses and throws his head back, whimpering and chewing on his lip, and John slides a hand under Alexander’s hips, forces them up and off the bed so he can leave his mark on the small of Alexander’s back as well. His own hips grind against Alexander’s and his stomach lurches, abrupt and insistent.

When Alexander’s breathing heavily again, his eyes wide and desperate, John re-wraps his hand around Alexander’s throat and the cycle restarts. They repeat it twice, three times, four times, until John can tell by the speed of Alexander’s pulse and the rise and fall of his chest when it’s time to stop choking him. Until John doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the way Alexander’s face twists and flinches in the flicker of the candlelight. John lowers his mouth to the meat of Alexander’s shoulder and begins to bite, still choking Alexander with one hand. He doesn’t stop sucking on the same area of skin even when he knows it’ll be nearly black with bruises, even when the only thing stopping Alexander from screaming is John’s hand against his throat.

This time, after Alexander’s gone limp and John’s released his grip, Alexander doesn’t whimper or squirm when he comes back from his daze. Instead, he reaches for John with both arms and pulls John tight against his chest. John’s still fully dressed and the rough fabric of his clothes against Alexander’s damaged skin can’t possibly feel good, but Alexander doesn’t let go.

“I need — ” Alexander says, but he seems too tired to finish his sentence.

John’s not sure what to say. Instead, he adjusts himself so he’s lying next to Alexander, rather than on top of him, and rests his head on Alexander’s shoulder, taking care to avoid the worst of the bruises. He drapes an arm across Alexander’s chest. Alexander eventually turns onto his side so he’s facing John and presses their foreheads together until they’re passing breath between them.

John reaches out and cups Alexander’s face, rubbing his thumb along Alexander’s cheekbone.

“Okay?” he asks again. 

Alexander gives him a slow smile and nods. “Walk,” he says.

It’s not what John was expecting and he props himself up on his elbow, looking down at Alexander.

“What?”

“I want to go for a walk. With you. Now.”

John’s warm and satisfied where he is, lying there with Alexander spread out next to him, but he obliges anyway. Alexander pulls his shirt and vest back on, wincing visibly as the fabric drags across the mottled skin, and leads the way down the stairs and out into the night. They settle into an easy stride, quick enough to keep the cold at bay but slow enough not to be exhausting, and they wander with false purpose towards the trees.

“Earlier today, in the common room. You seemed upset.” Alexander doesn’t look at John when he speaks and he stares up at the sky instead. His voice is ragged from being choked and talking with his head tilted back only exaggerates the effect.

“I told you,” says John. “I was angry.”

“Because you didn’t know what we were doing.” It’s not a question and his tone is flat. John knows that Alexander doesn’t entirely believe him.

Instead of confirming what Alexander’s just said, John asks, “What happens when the war ends?” 

It’s an oblique response at best, but John can’t bring himself to admit to his jealousy. Their breath billows in front of them like smoke and there’s almost no sound but the squeak of their boots against the relatively untouched snow. The camp, spread out around them and motionless as an insect in amber, is almost peaceful. John can almost forget the hunger gnawing in his belly and the knowledge that when the sun comes up, they’ll return to the tedium of the day. 

“What d’you mean?” asks Alexander. 

Their path takes them past Lafayette’s quarters and it’s late enough that the windows are dark and blank. John’s stomach knots up. He doesn’t want Lafayette to go. As willing as he is to die himself, the thought of his friends dying is sour and spoiled on the back of his tongue.

“For us,” John says eventually. “What happens for us.” It’s quiet and terrible and he hates that he’s asking it, but he can’t stop himself. He feels like he’s bored a hole in his own chest and invited Alexander to look inside, to take what he wants and use it as a weapon.

Alexander is uncharacteristically silent. He reaches for John’s hand where it’s swinging by John’s side and catches it in his own. 

“Does it matter?” he asks eventually. “We might not even survive this war. We might die before we find out.” 

“It matters to me. You have to marry. Anything we do — you have to marry. And you have to marry into money.”

“I know. But I can marry someone and still — still care for you.” Alexander takes a deep breath and adds, “I can still love you.”  

John nods, forgetting that Alexander can’t see him properly in the darkness. 

“I’ve never wanted this with anyone else,” Alexander goes on. “I mean, I’ve wanted _this_ — I’ve wanted the things you do to me — but I never found a person I wanted them _with_ before you. I don’t know that I will again.”

It’s too cold to stop or slow down, but John knows there’s a hole in Alexander’s chest now, too. He imagines reaching inside and cupping Alexander’s heart in his hands. 

“I don’t either,” John agrees, and the words seem to slip from his lips and land, newborn and shaking, on the snow in front of them. He’s suddenly very aware of how tired he his, and how much pain he’s in, and the way his face and hands ache.

“Getting married won’t change that,” says Alexander.

“For me either,” John agrees again, although he doesn’t see how that’s possible. He opens his mouth to tell Alexander about Martha, and about his child, and about the life he left behind in England, but he changes his mind just as he begins to speak. He can’t ruin this. They’re balanced on a fulcrum, poised between where they were that morning and where they’ll be tomorrow, and he can’t ruin it. 

Alexander clears his throat and jostles his shoulder into John’s until they both stagger sideways, their hands still clasped together. 

“You better make it out of this alive, Laurens,” Alexander says. His tone is the same as it always is when he’s teasing but it matters more, now. Everything matters more.

John doesn’t say anything and presses his shoulder tighter against Alexander’s instead, trapping their intertwined hands between their bodies. 

“I will if you will,” he says. Alexander squeezes his hand, a small invisible vow, and John returns the pressure. But it’s an empty promise and they both know it, even if neither of them is going to say so.

They keep walking like that, hand in hand, until they’re both shivering in earnest. John knows he should probably insist that they turn back but he can’t bring himself to do it, not yet.

 _Just a little longer_ , he tells himself. _Just a little ways more_.

The sky above them is clear and unfathomable, a shade of indigo so dark that it’s barely blue any longer, and a smear of stars arcs over their heads as though painted there in one broad stroke. John doesn’t expect it to last — it’s snowed almost every day and these moments of clarity are rare — but he’s oddly grateful for it anyway. It feels like a gift, given to the two of them while everyone else is asleep.

An owl hoots from somewhere in the distance and John startles, nearly tripping over his own feet. Alexander laughs and, with his free hand, breaks a switch of wood off of the nearest tree.  

“For later,” he says, and John can hear the laughter still playing in his voice.

“That’s going to hurt like _hell_ ,” says John, and then shuts his eyes. “Right. Sorry. That’s the point.”

“Only if you want to,” says Alexander, but he doesn’t drop the switch and holds it loose in his fist instead, letting the jagged tip of it trail along the ground behind them. John imagines the long, unbroken line it must be leaving in the snow, running parallel to their two pairs of footprints, and by this time tomorrow, he thinks, all these marks will be gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The line from Plutarch is a quote that historical Hamilton actually wrote down in his pay book. There’s a very cool Tumblr post about it [here](http://publius-esquire.tumblr.com/post/53918043823/by-action-rather-than-words-the-question-of).
> 
> I'm on Tumblr at [a-classic-fool](https://a-classic-fool.tumblr.com/), where I can frequently be found having emotions about John Laurens. I, like so many of us, crave validation, and comments make me all fuzzy inside.


End file.
